Rue Transnonain
by Le KING
Summary: LxLight, Mature. An unfortunate decision to sleep with his main suspect lands L in a difficult position with his reputation and heart. As L falls in love, Light falls from grace, and justice becomes no more than a price to pay for their feelings
1. Symphony in White

A/N: Hello, my name is King, I ACCIDENTALLY THE WHOLE STORY. This is a repost of like the 3 chapters it had because lots of people were like where the hell is it and I'm not gonna lie, I was really discouraged by the loss of reviews. ; - ; I'm over it now, and the story will continue. Also, I don't own Death Note.

By the way, I'd keep an eye on the Devil's Trill for the next couple of days if I were you. /hint

**Rue Transonian**

**CH1: Symphony in White**

L told Light the brunette protégé was his first friend ever.

And this was true – truth being a very uncharacteristic thing for L to say, but nevertheless, he said it with more honesty to it than he could credit himself with during a regular investigation of theft that he usually conducted by hiring thieves to aid him.

Light was L's first friend, ever, and as L took a particular care to define 'friend' over the years during which he had none, L calculated that to acquire a friend, he must find one that would be both extremely amusing and extremely dull, all while managing to keep L's interest, and at the same time being a useful furnishing to the interior.

Light kept L's interest because he was Kira, and Kira's IQ was as ridiculous as L's calorie count on a particularly criminal day. Which wasn't all it took - L had come across individuals of a similar calibre before, and L's trouble befriending them didn't particularly lie in them being _twelve_ per ce, it was rather that after periods of extreme amusement, they all entered periods of extreme dullness of "I-want-to-get-to-know-you-so-I-can-suppress-that-little-white—" and "glasses-are-too-mainstream-so-I'll-wear-these-goggles-instead" and finally "I-want-another-robot."

And, L supposed, Light was all that anyway – as Kira, he wanted to defeat L, as a young man, he considered jeans to be the abomination of abominations, and as someone with a mild case of psychopathy, he wanted attention by the bucket. Bucket of evidence aiding the Kira case. Bucket of blood from Kira's executions. It was all the same to him.

So when Light would go off on his daily rants about the goodness of good people and evilness of evil people, L wanted nothing more than to present the brunette with one of his own rants about the deliciousness of donuts. Yes. That was all L cared for good and evil.

The tragedy of young Light Yagami was his inexperience. He truly believed in the difference between good and evil, and L believed that Shakespeare, in addition to being taken too seriously by too many, had one piece of advice to offer: there was never anything good or evil, and only thinking made it so.

Invisible Gods existed to strike _moral_ fear with the sense of morality that exists in people's hearts.

Human Gods existed to be Hitlers and strike physical fear with a sense of fear of death that exists in people's minds.

Kira saw no difference, and having the power he acquired at no cost to himself, it was only a matter of time before he would justify the deaths of the innocent as those who were between himself and his perfect world.

The FBI agents that have done nothing but investigate murders – murders – done by Kira. And as Kira, Light murdered them too.

They were not criminals.

Kira was no-longer an invisible God that put fear into good people to stay morally good.

Kira was now a human God; he put fear into good people to either accept him or die by murdering good people.

And just as the mixture of people Kira had murdered could not be defined as only good or only evil, the FBI agents with wives, husbands and babies on the way, FBI agents with hundreds upon hundreds successful investigations to their names – Kira's good-and-evil way of thinking determined these FBI agents to be evil for no reason other than Kira's own gain.

This was why L cared for no nonsense about good or evil. Evil criminals proved to be good experts when it came to criminal cases.

Political terrorists proved to have no motives any different than Kira's motives.

There was no such thing as good and evil.

Rather than that nonsense, L stood for the most basic, stripped-down principals of morality. At their core was the moral wrongness of murdering.

And so Light was L's first friend because it served to L's greatest interest, no matter what the misguided brunette did, to stop the brunette from murdering.

What the authorities would do with him after L had stopped Kira wasn't a great concern for L, because authorities, just like Kira himself, thought too much and saw good and evil in criminals, lawyers, and grass that sometimes gave them paper-cuts. That evil, evil grass.

_-0-_

"When I have first tempted Kira-" L began his first confession to his first friend, and already this early into his confession, he felt his sentence being broken down into 'good' and 'evil' and when rather annoyed by being interrupted by Light's unspoken thoughts L turned to glare, he realised his sentence was labelled 'evil.'

He rolled his eyes.

"...do go on?" said his brunette companion.

"No, I rather think I should hear Light-kun's thoughts on my sentence."

"What?"

"My sentence, Light-kun. I trust you have found something wrong with it?"

"...no? Go on about Kira-"

"Light-kun will tell me of his thoughts about my sentence."

"Would you leave the stupid sentence alone; just go on about Kira!"

L found Light's aversion of topic rather suspicious, and explained this to him with a rather high percentage of likelihood of Light being Kira because of his inability to express his opinion on L's sentence.

" Would you just-"

L informed him that once again, the percentage went up.

"Fine. '_Tempted_.' You used the word '_tempted_.' I don't see how Kira can be _tempted_ into anything. You could have _lured_ him out with some criminals, but you couldn't have _tempted_ him because you have nothing to offer him."

"Ah," L scratched the bridge of his nose, which was more of a habit than an action done to relieve an itch because L found it made him look four percent more credible. He yanked the chain and both he and Light were up from their chairs and out of the offices, leaving one rather unhappy Soichiro Yagami to ponder his beautiful son's rather frequent disappearances with another man into more private areas of a hotel just as their conversation had turned rather pornographic.

Light followed L without question just as L believed in Light's innocence without question.

In other words: "where are you dragging me?" and "I was finishing a chart, the one you made me do, remember?" and "no, I don't want to talk to you, I just want to do my chart, can't you leave me alone for once?" and "are we there yet?" and "are we there yet?" and finally, "that's nice, can we go back now?"

They stood in the room that was used as a storage room for surveillance tapes, and L made a show out of surveying them. Out of the corner of his eye, just like many times before this, L caught the slightest movement of Light stiffening his lips and narrowing his eyelids just a hair, both actions of profound and cautious anxiety Light expressed over just what may be on those tapes – profound and cautious anxiety that proved nothing, and L wouldn't have it any other way anyway.

"These tapes," L began dramatically, "have not yet been viewed; any one of them may contain proof that Light-kun is a murderer." For a moment, L paused to savour Light's very composed expression. "This tape, however proves-" he took a deliberate pause, and watched a horrified expression on Light's soft face get blinked away, "-nothing of sort."

If Light ever shot L murderous looks, the subtle glance of very subdued reproach was all L would get.

Light had too much restraint in him, and L tried unsuccessfully to loosen that restraint, but Light was just too tight to let L have any effect on him.

And as that train of thought sounded just as pornographic as his previous one, L decided to go on about his confession.

"When I have first _tempted_ Kira, and I will return to my use of this particular word later, it was within our first confrontation. It is also on this tape."

Light guessed that the tape L triumphantly held in his non-shackled hand was the tape in which Kira murdered Lind L. Tailor thinking the man taunting him on TV was indeed L.

And while this was in fact what L was referring to, Light didn't guess correctly – the tape L was holding was a random tape he picked up out of a pile just to terrify his brunette friend. Of course, L confessed no such thing and offered to show a copy of 'the tape' he had on his MacBook.

"I have used the word 'tempted' because I honestly," L said honestly, "did not think Kira would murder Lind L. Tailor or whoever else would have appeared on that show."

"What?" the other murderer-by-proxy in the room said in outrage, "if you're trying to justify what you did to Lind L. Tailor, don't bother – it was wrong, and you know it!"

"Yes, I know it," agreed L, "however that information is irrelevant. What Light-kun should have taken from it was rather my assumption that Kira would not murder Lind L. Tailor."

"Why not? I mean, Kira is-"

"Whatever Kira is now is irrelevant. It is what Kira was _then_, and _then _Kira murdered no one but criminals. Criminals only, Light-kun. Do you see now?"

L saw that Light saw, and L heard a note of clarity ring though Light's head, as if the young murderer understood something he was previously very ignorant of. And then, just like that, Light dismissed the bell of clarity, and L was just appalled, even though he did not show it.

"Kira killed Lind L. Tailor thinking he was L. Kira 'killed' L. L was not a criminal. I mean, you aren't a criminal, Ryuzaki - but, as far as Kira knew at the moment, he killed an innocent person," Light said, rather stoically.

"Yes," L agreed. "This was the first time he had done this. Thereby, Light-kun is incorrect - I did have something to offer to Kira, and I _tempted_ him with it. And he was _seduced_ by it. Kira was seduced by justifications of his actions beyond murdering criminals out into the murdering good people who simply stood in his way, and I seduced him with this."

"Honestly, I think you're giving yourself too much credit here, Ryuzaki. Something eventually would have tempted him, and-"

"The seduction was not the murder of a non-criminal, Light-kun. The seduction, unfortunately, was that I did not die, instead, a criminal died, and I have put him up to it, and I, the ideal of Justice, have as good as murdered Lind L. Tailor myself. I didn't seduce Kira with a non-criminal murder, I seduced him – I seduced you, Light-kun – with the _justification_ of a murder of an innocent bystander."

In light of this argument and this sudden ping of realization, all Light said was all he could really say to justify himself.

"I am not Kira."

_-0-_

"You know," Light hissed at L from as far away as the chain allowed, and his hiss only stirred the darkness of the room; L was not asleep even though he politely pretended to be, and Light was not asleep because L could hear him fidgeting about. "It's rather suggestive that you chose two beds, as impractical as it is."

"Hmm?" L hummed passively, "I was rather trying to achieve the opposite as I chose two beds instead of one."

"That's what's so suggestive about it. You wouldn't have bothered with two beds if you didn't intend to make it look non-suggestive, which means that you were afraid of making it too suggestive if it was just one normal bed and not these two extremely small extremely uncomfortable beds so far apart that I can't move."

"Then I suggest Light-kun stops moving and goes to sleep," L frowned.

"Hey, don't get annoyed, I didn't mean anything by it other than hinting that you could maybe get better beds, or get over yourself and get one large bed so we could both sleep. Just an idea I had." Light fidgeted some more and turned on his side, making the metal links rattle louder than they both had been whispering.

"I sleep just fine, Light-kun's idea is invalid."

"You don't sleep."

"Yes, Light-kun. I sleep."

"You pull out your laptop and start playing flash games as soon as you think I'm asleep."

"There are no laptops allowed in this room, Light-kun."

"So if I were to look under your pillow, I wouldn't find one?"

"There is no looking under my pillow allowed in this room, Light-kun."

Light laughed, and L allowed himself a small grin as well because the room was dark and there was no one there to see it.

And then there was soft ringing of the chain links, rustling of the sheets and the friction of bare feet across two feet of carpet before L felt the side of his bed dip. So L pushed the intruder off, but the sneaky brunette thief clawed at L's clothing until he managed to somehow steal L's laptop from under his pillow and retreat back to his own bed.

"Give it back," L demanded, but the brunette was already typing away at the log-in screen. "Light-kun knows my password! The probability of Light-kun being Kira had just went up by-"

"Your password is '12345' and the probability of you being _L_ just went _down_ by ninety-five percent."

This wasn't L's work laptop because god-forbid he would let that be anywhere near Kira's grabby hands. But L still did not appreciate the insult and frowned.

"This is it, I am calling Watari."

"And I," Light ignored him triumphantly, "am shopping for beds. What's your sleep number?"

"Light-kun is being ridiculous."

"Oh look, this one's orthopaedic."

"Light-kun!"

"They have King-size in stock, nice. Priority shipping available-"

Annoyed, L yanked the chain hard enough to quite possibly leave some serious bruising on the brunette's wrist, and the white MacBook took up flight and gracelessly crashed to the floor, screen first. The hinges bucked, cracked, and all lights went off.

There was a moment of awkward silence.

"Now look what you did," L heard Light whisper awkwardly with a ping of guilt in it – he was just playing around, and the joke, apparently, had gone too far. And L did not feel bad for overreacting, he really didn't.

"Go to sleep, Light-kun," L grumbled.

"Fine," the brunette huffed and turned away. "You know what, no. Not fine. What is your problem, exactly?"

"Go. To. Sleep."

"Fine!" Light rustled his sheets again, and L thought he would attack him, except when a heavy body plopped next to him with a blanket and a pillow in tow, L was just about ready to attack first.

"You do not give up, do you."

"I don't give up and I don't lose. Move over and make space."

"Light-kun is waiting for me to punch him so he can have a fight."

"Yes."

"Then I will push Light-kun out, Light-kun will hit his head on the bed stand, Light-kun will die, and I will claim self-defence. Get out."

Light sighed and proceeded to plan eight or nine of his Light-Yagami-Will-Get-What-He-Wants-One-Way-or-Fifty-Other-Ways.

Plan eight or nine was apparently some long-overdue reasoning.

"Look, all I want is sleep. I can't sleep in that bed because the stupid chain won't let me turn or move an inch and I can either sleep on my arm or dislocate it and sleep on my side. Two beds are an impractical, terrible idea. I don't find it suggestive to sleep in the same bed, I don't find it weird, I don't find it anything other than practical and comfortable and not in the least bit awkwa-"

"Light-kun, I am exclusively attracted to men."

L could hear the quiet smack of the brunette's big mouth finally getting shut, and he wondered if this was a good idea to share such a personal bit of information with his murder suspect, but seeing as Light had the ability to be annoying forever, L saw no other choice at the moment.

And if he was to be perfectly honest with himself, he rather enjoyed shutting up the brunette for once, and just as he was savouring the moment, Light chose to start talking again.

"Oh," Light said uncertainly, and suddenly became very attentive to the distance between himself and L and very gingerly began to move his leg from where it came in contact with L's. "I... I couldn't tell."

"Yes, I enjoy keeping it that way. Now that Light-kun is aware of our predicament, if he would politely-"

"I don't mind."

L was too annoyed to sigh.

"Well, Light-kun, it may come as a shock to you, but I _do_ mind-"

"Okay, fine. I'll rephrase myself. I think you're lying."

L was always lying, and so Light's thought wasn't very original.

And so, more to prove a point rather than because he was attracted to the brunette, and more because he didn't want to back down than he wanted to prove his questionable honesty, L yanked the brunette up by the shirt.

He had no plans to allow Light the time to realize what was happening and break free; he gripped the brunette's shoulder firmly - hard enough to distract him with a jolt of pain, pinched the chin with his thumb and pulled the startled mouth open just wide enough to press his lips against it.

Quick, short, without a chance to escape it.

L pulled away before Light pushed him away, and the whole thing couldn't have gone better.

There was a minute of silence.

Then there was the back of the hand that wiped the stolen lips.

And then there was trouble.

"You like me?"

"Not particularly."

"Good, 'cause I don't really like you either."

"We are in mutual agreement."

"Then there is really no problem if I sleep in the same bed as you."

If L had a free hand that he wasn't using to restrain a Light Yagami, he would have used it to smack it against his own forehead in utter despair.

But since his hand was still gripping a lean shoulder and a thumb was still holding a chin, L found himself in the perfect position to lean in for Seconds. He then found one Light Yagami in the perfect position to lean back into L's bed.

Their breaths did not become laboured for a while as L wasn't exactly sure what came over him to do this, and Light was seventeen.

"What exactly are we doing?" L asked himself between the soft kisses he was trailing down Light's neck, and he didn't want to say 'what am I doing' because he didn't feel like accepting the full responsibility for his actions.

"I don't know," was what Light said quietly and angled his neck for L to access it easier. "I don't even know if I like this."

"There is nothing to like," L bit the soft skin, "I am not even touching you, Light-kun. This is just-"

"Just?"

"Just evidence."

"Ah, I see. Okay. Do you want to, though?"

"Do I want to what, Light-kun?"

"Do you want to touch me?"

L fisted a handful of brown hair and levelled his stare with the brunette's; Light looked up and L hovered over, so close that their noses touched and warm breaths tickled their eyelashes.

"Not particularly," L answered.

"I think I'd like you to."

"Light-kun is seventeen."

And there and then, in the eyes of a seventeen-year old Light Yagami, L saw a murderer. Light – no, not Light, Kira – Kira looked up at L in admiration and curiosity. Whatever L ever did or ever experienced, Kira wanted it too. Kira wanted to see L justify himself. Kira wanted more of that seduction L had offered.

And L saw no harm in it because this was not an opportunity Light could use to his advantage, because if L offered no such opportunity, Light would not have let himself be taken so easily, nor would he have initiated it, as it would have given him no advantages.

So L grabbed another fistful of hair, crushed his mouth into already swollen and tender lips of Light Yagami and bit and restrained and left scratches in places that would be hidden by clothing so no one would know.

Light wasn't particularly fond of being handled so roughly, but L kissed his mouth and muffled any protests with his hand before he could hear them; before long, he allowed his mouth to descend on Light's almost limp cock and without much effort got the brunette hard and weeping.

He squeezed the base and used his thumb to massage the sensitive sack while scraping his teeth along the shaft and lapping up precum.

"Still want me to touch you?"

Light, having stopped resisting as soon as L started to work on the regions that were actually pleasant, squinted his eyes and bit his lip, possibly in thought, probably to swallow a quiet moan.

L made a point by squeezing the base a lot harder than necessary and the brunette did make a noise this time.

"It will hurt," L continued and having captured Light's unfocused gaze with his own gave the tip of the erect cock a cute kiss.

A gasp and a jolt.

Of course he liked seeing that.

"It will hurt a lot, it has already hurt because I am not a particularly gentle partner, nor do I particularly like you to put your comfort above mine. So," and L teased, and he couldn't help but tease, and teasing only aroused Light more, "does Light-kun _want_ me to proceed?"

A hard, nervous swallow.

A nod.

L wanted him to say 'no.' As the day was full of odd remarks of honesty, L felt that one last confession to himself was due: L wanted him to say 'no' because L did not want to touch or fuck Kira, not particularly, not at all.

But he did anyway, and as soon as he heard the young man under him hiss, he vowed to make him hiss rather than smother him in unjustified pleasure. L began to stroke Light's member after having abandoned it with his mouth, and Light hissed again as L pushed his dry middle finger into the tight pucker of muscle.

Light bucked and actually kicked, but was apparently too proud to say anything but hiss and make illegible "hnn" noises. As soon as L managed to straddle him and steady him enough, Light only kicked and bucked more. The pucker of muscles was hot and so very tight because for some reason Light was determined not to let L in, and L actually had to lean in close to the brunette's gasping face and whisper to him that he should really let go and relax, or else he would really regret it in the morning.

But he wouldn't, and once L dug his way inside properly, the tightness around his fingers only convulsed, clamped down and bled. L resorted to attacking the bitter coffee-flavoured mouth and jerking the hard member as he very gingerly played inside of the boy with his fingers than doing any actual stretching, just to get him used to it. He scissored his fingers and tried to move them in and out, but the convulsing muscles clang to his fingers and L decided he had given it satisfactory effort.

"Roll over," L hissed, and the brunette reached out to him, tangled his long fingers in L's hair, and kissed L in some odd desperation. So L flipped him over himself, and just as the brunette struggled to get on his knees, L squeezed the perfectly-shaped cheeks and used his thumbs to pry the tight hole open.

This time, Light did nothing short of scream, and he tried to muffle the second scream that came when L penetrated his raw and just barely prepared opening with his dry and hard cock.

"A-ahh g-gua-hnn" were the words Light managed to say, and by the convulsing passage of dry, tight heat around him, L could tell how much it had hurt. Finally his knees gave, and he almost collapsed, except for some reason L caught him. He wasn't sure why as it made no difference for L what position the brunette was in, but to ease the strain, L pulled the young man up to his lap. The quivers of the naked back transferred into L's chest where he held him, and still, Light refused to say anything, and L had yet to move.

"Relax," L hissed into Light's ear, and a bead of sweat dropped from his nose to the shoulder under him. "Yes, good, n-now move your hips, like thisss..."

The more the brunette did as he was told, the more stiffened gasps and moans filled the room, and when L finally started thrusting into the raw passage, Light was ready to come, and then he moaned louder than any sound L had ever heard from him, and he kept moaning as L rammed his prostate and jerked his member, but the loudest scream yet came when L himself couldn't take the dry heat any longer and released deep into the brunette.

L heard himself shout something too, and allowed himself to ride out his own orgasm however he wanted to; he vaguely remembered reaching out to the brunette's mouth to make sure he had not bit his tongue. He only found saliva there.

When the soft dizziness allowed L to escape its embrace, he found himself still inside Light, except the brunette was no-longer conscious. L went to wipe the off his own sweat, and only stopped himself when he felt the white mess of Light's release on his face.

He watched it trickle down his hand.

Sin was white in color.

_-0-_

**A/N: **This quite possibly may end up my third baby after DT and AG. It depends on the response I get, and really, on how far I want to take cannon. Based loosely on cannon and too much cannon to be an AU, I shall call it... my manifesto.

**Initial thoughts are very much appreciated since its summer and nobody reviews during summer for some reason. ;-;**

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	2. Saturn Devouring His Son

A/N: Hello, my name is King, time to publish NaNo, and I don't own Death Note.

**Rue Transnonain**

**CH2: Saturn Devouring His Son**

L found 'Ryuzaki Rue' to be one of both his worst and his better aliases; worst because L was growing rather attached to the sound it made as it chimed through Light's lips whenever the brunette gave a particularly violent toss to the sweaty bed sheets of L's bed and whispered 'Ryuzaki' over and over in what to L appeared to be the most unpleasant slumber.

Light whispered the name and coiled tighter into himself, protecting whatever remainders of dignity he managed to keep, if only literally in his dreams, disturbed, dishevelled, and not particularly fond of what was happening to him in his dream... feelings L imagined Light managed to keep to himself during the actual event of intercourse, but could not hide, much less get away from, in his disturbed sleep.

From the edge of the too-small bed (the bed L silently accused, trialed, and sentenced to an untimely garbage disposal come morning), L did little but watch his prisoner toss and turn and whisper L's assumed name with a lot more revulsion than he would had he not been sleeping. L was growing attached to the name because at least in his sleep, at least after L had fucked – fucked, and he had no better word for what he did – fucked Light harder and nastier than he gave himself credit for ever fucking anyone else - at least and finally, the revulsion in Light's jagged whispers of L's assumed name gave L at least a small indication how the brunette really felt about him.

Ryuzaki.

L found 'Ryuzaki Rue' to be one of both his worst and his better aliases; best because it made him sound appropriately sad.

And L was about to reflect some more on why having a sad name was appropriate, and possibly write a poem or knit a sweater while he was at it, but in the darkness of the room, his phone vibrated against the floor where it was trapped further away from L that it has ever been – in L's jeans, which were not on him at the moment.

Naked and more conscious of his skin stretching over his bones and soreness in his muscles than he was comfortable with, L took a step off the bed and it creaked under the sole of his foot.

Light tossed, and kept tossing, still asleep, thank heavens, because L was not in the mood to face what he had done at that particular moment.

The phone kept vibrating, and L measured the distance between himself and his jeans, then his wrist and Light's wrist, and finally the chain length he had at his disposal. It was not enough.

L considered yanking Light awake and getting his phone, and then acting like nothing had ever happened in the first place.

After realizing he would not be able to get away with acting cold turkey, L very seriously considered if he could get away with strangling Light with the chain in question instead; anything to make the problem at hand go away.

And a problem it was. The situation was a mess. A mess to be reckoned with. And before any feelings or motivations could get in the way and make the mess even more complicated, L had some very unfavourable facts to consider.

_L had sex with a lying murderer... _

_No_, L had to remind himself. _No feelings. Facts. _

_L had sex of questionable consent with an underage prisoner he had in his custody. _

L rattled the chain, it clanked like a dull bell, and for all it was worth, unlocked it from Light's wrist, gathered his pants, and went to take the call outside.

_No, Congressman-san. L has not caught Kira yet. You still may die for those photographs of your seven year-old niece and your penis your wife found under your bed. Yes, Congressman -san, you have a good sleep too. _

_-0-_

Light had stopped tossing at six-forty-nine AM and slept all the way to seven in the morning. L had made a mental promise to let Light sleep for however long he wanted to, be there when the brunette woke up, and even intended to extend the courtesy as far as offering him his morning coffee.

At seven zero-seven AM, L was too bored to remember any promises he had made.

"Light-kun," L hummed, eager to get the confrontation over with as quickly as possible.

Light said nothing, didn't even stir, and it suddenly occurred to L that Light was dreading the confrontation just as L was dreading it, but instead of outright staring his unwilling conversation partner down like L had been, Light chose to fake sleep, and albeit, had done it badly.

"Light-kun is awake," L said, louder and sharper, "I can tell by his breathing."

A quiet curse came from underneath the blanket where the brunette had wisely hidden his head, and L wondered what he was supposed to say then.

"Fine, I'm awake, now could you not hover over me like a bison so I can get dressed at least?" Light saved him the trouble.

L was going to suggest a shower, but decided against it and backed a polite distance away.

And then, like a crumpled, sore child that slept the wrong way, Light pulled his knees off the mattress and propped himself up, allowing the stark-white blanket fall away from his upper body and unveil L's crimes – which were not all that bad.

Light had a couple of deep scratches on his shoulders – and L accounted for matching scratches on his own body – probably some on his back as well, a small, mouth-shaped purple bruise by his nipple, and another faint bruise around his wrist.

But this was about it.

So much for a battered and bleeding version of the Yagami boy L managed to convince himself with over the course of the night.

So L waited patiently for the brunette to stand up and let the blanket fall away completely from his lower regions and legs so L could inspect those and calm the hell down, but apparently, he was being too conspicuous about his plans.

"Do you mind?"

L shifted his gaze from the lightly sculpted body to the face it was attached to.

"Do I mind...?" L lead on.

"I'm naked. Turn away, Ryuzaki."

"I do not have a problem with that," L decided to pay a visit to a long-irrelevant argument. "Instead, I believe it is rather practical to inspect the, ah, damage."

"Wow. I didn't know you cared," Light said in a tone that made it obvious of how aware he was that L was just covering his own ass.

L shrugged, Light rolled his eyes, tossed the blanket away half-heartedly, stood up, hissed, and sat back down.

"Light-kun is just fine," L finished his assessment of his suspect's general health.

Light glared a glare that was several phases off from the zone of friendly annoyance and several steps into the zone of hatred.

"-would Light-kun like coffee?"

And then the hatred vanished, and so did the chime of a bell that accompanied it.

L wondered if Light had actually reconsidered hating him, or simply chose to hide his hatred, much like he did in every controlled second of his controlled life, and silently, L made a long mental list of things he would seriously give up in exchange for knowing for sure how Light truly felt about certain things.

Right now, all L could tell was that Light chose to act like an adult.

He stopped glaring, smoothed over his ruffled feathers, and acted like what he thought adults acted like.

L had no idea how to act like an adult, so he could not make any accurate assessments.

"Yes, please," Light said to coffee.

L nodded once, and chain-free, shuffled off to search for Watari to make coffee he could pretend to have made himself and then give to Light as a sign of his positive intentions.

"Good morning, Ryuzaki," Soichiro Yagami greeted L and L made polite small talk about weather with the man whose son he had deflowered of his male virginity just hours ago. Then, for the lack of the correct etiquette education for a situation such as this, L stared an unblinking gawk into Watari's scolding eyes as the older gentleman poured L Light's coffee in distinct disapproval.

L took advantage of Watari's courtesy not to say anything in front of Soichiro Yagami who had a variety of objects such as lamps, dishes, staplers and chairs at his disposal to break against L's head should he get a whiff of what L was up to last night with his handsome and masculine son.

Equipped with a steaming cup of positive intentions, L returned to the room he had left Light Yagami in just minutes ago.

He should have known better; several minutes missed were often the most vital several minutes from months and months of minutes.

Light Yagami was not in the bed anymore.

Obviously, Light would be in the bathroom.

But Light Yagami was not in the bathroom either.

As uncharacteristic of him as a quick shower was, L supposed it was plausible, given the unusual circumstances.

If not in the shower or the bathroom, Light would be already downstairs.

Doing _what_?

L sincerely hoped Light was composing a chart, or cleaning up after the small army of technically-unemployed police officers and not actually making conversation with them. Not talking. Definitely anything but talking. Light, talking, was bad. If being Kira had any harmful side-effects – which would be a justified price, L noted, and stored the idea away as something he should develop later – then Light suddenly going mute was something L would drink champagne too.

But Light, in all the glory of his morning perfection, was chatting up his father or all people, and L mentally choked on his imaginary champagne.

Light, graceful and all smiles, was leaning against his father's desk. His posture was easy but his back was rigid, and he was bending just a few degrees lower than his usual poised and casual "bend." Not low enough for anyone to notice unless they were in a habit of scrutinizing the brunette's every move down to micro expressions – and this was how L knew Light was doing it for a show only L had the privilege watching.

It was an expressive bend of a wounded bird.

Light was smiling tightly and telling his father stories in secretive whispers – stories L knew to be about pie charts and office staplers and workplace gossip, because L could read lips and Light knew L could read Lips, but it was a show nonetheless. It was staged to make L jittery with anxiety over the possibility of Light about to _tell_.

In a graceful, carefully constructed tease, Light reached over to straighten his father's papers, and L saw another intended imperfection: the sleeve cuffs of Light's cream shirt were rolled up just a quarter of an inch higher than the appropriate sleeve lengths, ever shorter when Light reached for his father's paper, just a hair away from exposing a rather nasty bruise around a silky wrist.

The gull.

There was tension in Light's pink lips, the kind L saw when upon his acquaintance with Misa Amane the girl glanced over something invisible above L's head – something L had no way of naming, but Light's tight lips were there, and secretly, L feared that his meeting of the lovely Miss Amane words over his gravestone – because that ever-slight tension in the corners of Light Yagami's mouth may – or may not have been – a smile.

And the thought of that supressed thing that may – or many not – be a smile, then and there, in the citadel of L's hideout, was disconcerting.

L read the few degree bend in Light's back, whispered conversations between the brunette and his father, and the shortness of Light's sleeve as a dance of a peacock.

It was a spectacle for L to translate, and L translated it as a threat.

Light, L thought, was doing his petty little show to assert his power over the situation.

This, L thought, was Light's way of saying _'You better behave, L-love, or that sleeve that's covering a hand-shaped bruise just. Might. Accidentally. Slip.'_

This, L thought, was _blackmail_.

His fist clenched, and a piece of fingernail L forgot to bite off fully lodged itself into a sensitive spot in his palm, but L was beyond noticing it. He stared at the brunette – really stared with a stare and posture of someone gawking at a spectacle with his own lips tight and eyes unblinking.

It didn't take Light long to notice him, and he was first to notice him. When he looked up with the most innocently blank expression from where he was fiddling with Soichiro Yagami's documents, L said nothing.

Instead, L smiled his own best smile, and it wasn't an awkward grin that he sometimes let slip through when he felt truly overjoyed – no, it was an effortless, innocent and saintly smile Light often flashed at L.

L practiced that vile thing in the mirror over and over again with Light's photograph as a reference, until he could imitate it precisely, as something he could use for an instance not unlike this.

Light's face, if blank before, became even more blank.

And again, with grace of Light Yagami, L turned to the door and walked out, his back straight and his steps easy. It was only when he turned his back to the NPA team and faced to door did his effortless, innocent and saintly smile turn vengeful.

He heard Watari's patronizing steps behind him as he stomped into the elevator, courteously held the door, and punched the button that took them to anywhere but here.

The doors shut, and he and the old Watari stood stiffly – Watari stiff with admonishment and L stiff because his back was on fire from all that straightness.

"Isn't that," Watari began, "the coffee you were going to offer to Light-san?"

L glared down into the hand that wasn't bleeding from dreadful fingernail injuries. In it, L indeed still had a steaming cup of black and bitter concoction of positive intentions.

As soon as the elevator opened, L marched out and dumped his positive intentions into the nearest fake palm pot.

"Watari-san, I will require Light Yagami's To-Oh records as well as the records of the To-Oh's nurse."

"L."

"That will be all," L insisted as he planted himself into the nearest couch with his back to Watari and opened a MacBook that he conveniently had nearby to appear punctual and organized but instead actually stashed at least two identical MacBooks on each floor of his HQ citadel.

"L."

"Fine," L huffed and opened his hacking software. "I shall get them myself."

"L, what in the world are you doing?"

"_Kira_," L restrained himself from hissing, "had barely left my bed, and already he is blackmailing me."

Watari seemed taken aback by this, and it earned L a pause he used to start his assault onto the To-Oh database.

"Are you sure, L?"

"I am sure."

"But you have barely spoken to him for him to blackmail you."

"I am _sure_, Watari."

"Alright," Watari retreated, "How exactly is he blackmailing you?"

"With his face."

The pause Watari took was discouraging.

"And how do you know his face is blackmailing you?"

"I_ just _know."

"L-"

"Please go away now!" L did not mean to raise his voice, but because he did anyway he apologised.

"L, please stop and think whether whatever it is that you're doing is in fact a fair response to what you only _think_ is happening."

Again, L did not mean to shout but shouted anyway.

What did Watari _think_ L _thought_ was happening? Kira had crawled into his bed on purpose to use as material for extortion. This was not a thought, it was a fact L knew to be true based on no evidence and derived from a ten-second interview that used no words.

"Perhaps Light-san is simply troubled and you have misread him," the old man suggested unhelpfully and L allowed himself to entertain the notion of being wrong for only a moment because as soon as he did he heard an obnoxious chime.

He slammed his notebook shut and listened, annoyed and ready to lash out.

But the chime was just the natural ringing in his ears. Wasn't it? Was it the ringing in his ears or a windchime or a bell? What were bells doing in his headquarters?

Or was it just the ringing in his ears?

It was, wasn't it?

Light was attempting to blackmail him, wasn't he?

"Do you hear that?" L spat in his irritation.

"Hear what?"

"The air conditioning," L decided angrily, and the chime vanished. Its absence did not calm him. "And yes, I am sure Light is blackmailing me."

"L, do as you see fit," Watari told him in comforting English. "But I think this time you should not be so sure."

L's anger only escalated and he hissed.

"I _can_ and I _am_ sure, _because I have no luxury to entertain doubt._"

_-0-_

L kept the bed.

L kept both beds.

It was childish of him, and it was juvenile compared to the icing of his cake, but L was childish and juvenile and had too much power anyone with an ounce of sanity should have given him in the first place.

He did not reinstate the handcuffs that day, justifying it with something about 'observing a predator in his natural habitat' and although the freedom it gave Light was unsettling, the look on Light's face was worth it. When Light walked into their shared room, he saw that the old beds were still here – probably a nasty and unsettling reminder for him - and the only new thing in the room was a stack of papers on his pillow.

There was hesitation, but the brunette swallowed it down and cleared his sleeping space.

"What's this?" he fanned himself with the papers semi-cheerfully, probably aware that L was sending fire and hell his way all day long.

L intentionally said nothing, turned away, gathered his laptop and a supply of sweets spitefully and hopped onto his bed. He did not look Light's way – no, that would be petty – instead he pre-installed a camera aimed at exactly the spot Light would take to pick up the papers – and watched the brunette from the screen of his laptop.

It was something he would savour.

In the little window on his screen, the young brunette man (who was really only a few feet away from L) flipped through the documents and stilled. He pressed his list together, turned the page over, and finally sat down on the edge of his bed, consumed by what he saw on the pages.

He flipped pages and read, and L waited patiently until a few minutes later Light carefully turned over the last page with his fingertips, as if not wanting to touch the thing, turned all pages back over and gingerly tapped the stack against his knees to straighten them out.

He was quiet.

"These things are not true," he finally said softly, staring at his knees absently.

"As it happens," L mimicked Light's quiet tone, "the two professors whose classes, according to Light's academic report, you were failing and then suddenly excelling at were stomped to death in one of Kira protests. Thus they have no way of confirming _or denying_ whether or not Light-kun has been failing their subjects and suddenly excelling at them after two separate sexual assault reports you have filed against them and dropped only once they passed you."

Light said nothing.

"Furthermore, Light-kun may have noticed that the sexual assault examinations exhibit classical signs of being self-inflicted and thus faked."

"You forged these?"

"Not at all," L said dismissively, "these are simply copies of what currently resides in Light-kun's academic record."

Light kept quiet, and triumphant, L stuffed his mouth with gummy bears and replaced the video feed with Angry Birds.

"Good night, Light-kun, I hope you are more comfortable sleeping without, ah, any rough circumstances tonight. By that I of course I mean the chain," he added as an afterthought.

Minutes passed, and ten of them were gone and L's red birds were sucking worse than ever and L had already forgotten about Light being in the room, when from his spot on the bed Light's clothes finally ruffled in movement.

"Why would you do this," he said simply.

Luckily, L remembered what it is that he had done before he asked.

"I assure you, if Light-kun is ever proven innocent of being Kira, this smudge on his academic record will disappear."

Light listened facing away.

"However," L mused aloud, "if sexual accusations against a figure of authority - one who does not favour you - are to ever appear, Light-kun's track record of similar accusations in order to get grades will surely surface, and, ah, dent his credibility even in the eyes someone as high-ranking as the chief of NPA."

From a distance away, Light nodded.

"I understand," he said simply, changed into his nightclothes and tucked himself under blankets. "And if you want to fuck me again to help keep these 'documents' form surfacing, I guess you can do that too."

Because the air conditioning suddenly starting ringing out of nowhere once again, L wasn't sure if he heard Light say something else or just imagined it.

He decided he heard nothing, and the bell inside the air conditioning went mute, and there was only silence. L took that silence as a silence of defeat.

L had won this round, he decided, because Light's silence as good as a confession – a confession that Light was in fact out to blackmail L and that L was right all along.

L found L to be one of the best and the worst names he could have had. Best, because mistaking L for an initial and writing it as L. could potentially save his life.

Worst, because L started words like Loser and Liar, and L hated losing, and L hated people lying to him, but L himself was a liar, and L lied even to himself.

_-0-_

Thank you reviewer shout outs go to: **blueandorangesky10, misswarchan, Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog, samalane, Jetta, Chasing, Blue, Viyola**, **fan-fan31, goldenpaw, Suki, juri, Bob Da Peach, LoveDN, SasuHika, Nilahxapiel, Vertically-lacking, LYnM, insignifican, Gladioli, 0331V1** and **Cruel Angel's Love!**

So here's the thing though: the first chapter is implying that L is not a saint.

**L, as a narrator, is not very credible**, and you guys have to realize that. Before you justify L, you want to consider if Light was –_actually_- putting on a show to blackmail L, or if the whole thing was because Light himself was in a state of mental distress and was acting weird because of it.

What do you think? Am I just messing with you?

Who's blackmailing whom here?

l

l

l

V


	3. Yard with Lunatics

A/N: Hello, my name is King, American money is weird and needs more color so we can tell it apart, sincerely Canadians, and I don't own Death Note.

** Rue Transnonain **

**CH3: Yard with Lunatics**

The chime of the bell was an octave lower when L finally heard Light say three magic words that meant the world for him.

"I like Kira."

Of course, 'like' would have sounded better if it was 'am' – but two out of three wasn't bad.

"Yees?" L said, dragging his only syllable as he conspicuously he clicked "on" a little microphone icon on his MacBook and turned around with ominous slowness.

"Yes," said Light pointedly and explained that he was going to offer no explanation by offering none. Instead, he licked his thumb and leafed through toilet paper-thin pages of a Bible he was researching.

On Light's desk towered stacks of Freud writings, Christian doctrines, occasional Hindu pieces and a few Yoga-At-Home books, all catalogued into neat piles. L assumed the tall stack on Light's left was a stack Light deemed useless because about a third of the first book was hanging off the desk's surface, looking dangerously close to collapsing into a waste bin directly under it.

The "useful" stack on the left was mostly Abrahamic, and L decided that if Light subscribed to a religion other than Narcissism and attended anything other than Manicure Mass on Mondays, he would fit in the Christian mainstream quite snugly as the newest prophet.

The Book of Light certainly had a ring to it.

_Book of Light 20:13 – "Thou shalt not kill world's greatest detectives."_

What.

If L could forge Light's college records, he could probably get away with forging Light's Bible.

"Anything else, Light-kun?"

Light's expression remained stoic, if not spiteful.

"No – not really."

"Is there any particular reason Light-kun wished to share his sudden affection for Kira with me? A glance in the mirror, perhaps? Or, a subconscious thought?"

They discussed it – they discussed it before, they discussed it after, and they discussed it for a long time - and when there was nothing left to discuss, they discussed the discussion of it: what if, by some merit or vice or chance, Light Yagami was Kira _subconsciously_.

When the discussion had finally exhausted itself in every way, L had retreated and refused to talk to anyone for a couple of days until Watari brought out heavy confectionary artillery and refused to give it to L until he greeted every police officer in his possession a good morning.

There were things L knew: facts, rather, truths; truthshe knew to be facts and not opinions. L knew a great deal of things. But he didn't know Kira.

This was why Light Yagami drove him up the wall and back down it to his knees until his kneecaps hurt and the rough tagging in his hair overshadowed the rush of satisfaction; Light had the very piece of knowledge L could only hold as an opinion, and L wanted that knowledge, and L couldn't deal with not having it in any _appropriate_ manner.

Either Light was Kira (which was so likely that it made L's ears bleed sucrose listening to Matsuda and chief Yagami sing hymns to Light's innocence ), or Light was not Kira, and while L held the opinion that Light was Kira, only Light held it as knowledge.

Light being Kira subconsciously was a possibility L and Light discussed until the matter had more wear-and-tear in it than Watari's old socks.

What if Light was Kira – at some point some time ago – but now, the Kira persona had packed up his poison into cardboard boxes and simply left, leaving behind no traces and no memories?

There were consequences if Light was not Kira at this precise moment of patronizing conversation, consequences…

…ones that L was unwilling to accept because even thinking them would pull the carpet from under L's tower of rationalizations and justifications…

… and it offered him a degree of comfort…

…to think…

…that no matter what L did to Light…

It.

Was.

Well.

Deserved.

_But what if it wasn't. _

What if Light was Kira, but did not know it.

Was L justified in doing wrongs by Light if Light held no awareness of the murders he committed.

_These were not questions because L was not willing to ask them. _

There was a possibility Light was innocent through ignorance.

There was always such a possibility.

It was a sad one.

"No," Light's voice had a tune in it. "I didn't have any subconscious thoughts. I just decided I like Kira now, and that I should let you know. That's all," he said, as if L was dismissed.

"Elaborate," L demanded.

Light regarded L coolly, and after a moment of mental debate, retracted his pen from a marked-up passage in the Bible, gave the page a dog ear, and finding no space for it on his desk, dropped the Bible to the floor by his feet.

"I have a theological elaboration."

L was not a patient man, and he knew when his patience was being strung up like a clapper inside a bell.

"Right. You know how Kira obviously thinks he's a God?"

"Considering I _know_," L lied and let himself off on using the word 'know' instead of 'think' because it make him sound more menacing, "that Light-kun _is_ Kira, this is unsurprising. Next."

"You could be less hostile, _everything_ considering," Light said evenly, hinting.

L made effort to keep his expression unchanged.

"Right. Kira thinks he's a God, the closest to an actual theological God he gets is the Christian God, with all the _smiting_ considering, and between the Christian God and Kira, Kira at least has his reasons beyond "God works in mysterious ways." So I like him more. Are we done?"

L replied by rolling his eyes up to heavens where no doubt the Christian God rolled his own eyes in annoyance, and made a show out of turning off the microphone on his iMac and starting up a game of Solitaire.

"_What_."

"Nothing at all, it is just that, at times like these, I am concerned about the general consensus of Light-kun's genius, which," L tried to put a king on a four, "I sometimes doubt."

"Funny," Light's voice was dry. "But unrelated. We're talking about God. Well, I tell you, let me give you a little inside information about God."

L choked on his own spit and acidy sugar residue his lunch éclair left in his sinuses – really, he choked, and held his breath and kept his eyes shut not to give himself away by going into a coughing fit.

Such bad humor, such bad references. Light was doubtless forging a silly side of himself with L to gain trust. How lame.

But what to do about it? Since he was already on a spree of going off to random tasks in the most ADHD manner only to avoid Light's stupidity – which may or may not have been a great fat joke that wasn't funny - L couldn't tell – he abandoned solitaire, opened his cellphone and began pressing buttons.

"I am serious, Ryuzaki, and I know you're listening, so put your phone away. God likes to watch. He's a prankster. Think about it."

_W -_

_Please search the Cookie Monster's residence for any and all Al Pacino content, as it is taking a dick fig erection on my person. Please burn it on sight. Burning it is essential to the case. _

_-R_

L had the common sense to look over his text before sending.

_Dick fig erection _was promptly disarmed into a harmless _difficult_ _reflection_.

Damn autocorrect.

"…Look but don't touch," Light carried on, "Touch, but don't taste. Taste, don't swallow."

L still refused to participate, though now the joke nobody was meant to get seemed patronizing.

"I mean really – that whole apple and the tree of knowledge thing. What was that all about? Here's a tree, but don't eat the apple? Some apple – a magic drug for genius."

Ah. So it ended.

"Perhaps Light-kun should eat one to maintain his."

But the tanned face of one Light Yagami took longer to recover into prevailing silly friendliness this time, and whatever expression it replaced made L less intent on remaining hostile each time.

All he really wanted was to kick that faux friendliness where it beamed off Light's pretty face; but of course he couldn't, and settling for cold and antagonistic one-liners suddenly felt petty. So he dropped the act and suddenly, his day became better and Light's references became harmlessly ironic, much to L's dismay.

He sighed and stared up at the ceiling where the popcorn flakes created cloud patterns only L knew. Looking back down to earth from his plaster heaven, L noticed one Yagami, somehow awkwardly small in his chair.

L rubbed the back of his neck and felt dead skin cells clomp together under his fingernails.

Light, despite his genius, was a boy.

L was groomed into his genius and equipped with knowledge by adults – the knowledge Light didn't know to equip himself with.

Potential – so much of it. L saw himself, awkwardly small, in Light's chair, blinked, and the apparition vanished.

He sighed again and lazily started towards the brunette, who by then looked weary and shrunk back into his chair once L reached him.

He looked distressed, L noted; admittedly, Light looked distressed for quite some time now, a day or two or however long, and L was sure it was a ploy, but up close from a hair of distance between them, the ploy looked sad and melancholy. Relaxed, confident, yes, but just enough to resemble a façade.

So which was the façade? The pathetic distress or the beaming confidence?

L was close to him – so close he could feel calm breaths against the hem of his shirt because where L stood Light sat exactly at his waist level. Being faced with L's waist level did _something_ alright.

L meant to intimidate.

He didn't mean to be cruel.

He pressed his lips together in an onset of storage humility which washed over him like something warm that melted women – perhaps radiating heat came from the gaping hole in Light Yagami's chest, _that heartless bastard. _He looked over the brown hair, black roots already peaking an eighth of an inch from underneath auburn bleach treatment. What great inconvenience for a mass murderer it was, L thought, to be kept in confinement and thus be unable to maintain his perfect hair.

Finally, L resigned to humility.

Sluggishly, to make his change in mood seem gradual, he bent down and dropped an arm, pausing ever so slightly once their eyes levelled. He could feel bitter coffee breath touch his cheek.

Light was so close, L could smell him. He could taste his mouth without kissing it, he remembered his firm and naked flesh at his fingertips and in his palms and against his own – he remembered and he mentally kicked himself for it.

Instead of dropping his hand to Light's thigh, which was jerking a little, L scooped up the Bible from its place at Kira's feet.

He returned to his chair.

He will reflect on actually _wanting_ to fuck the murderer instead of 'taking him because he could' later. Much later. Preferably never.

"I assume Light-kun has very little interest in theology."

Light's beaming friendliness returned.

"I took courses."

"Beyond courseware, Light-kun. It is quite rare to catch you with so little knowledge about such a popular subject. Is this your first time with a Christian Bible?"

"Second, and I only skimmed," Light admitted. "What did I get wrong? It's hard to see you as someone who has any interest in theology either. Unless… oh," his face animated in amusement, "oh no, sorry – no. The tree of knowledge was an apple tree, Ryuzaki, not a cake tree."

L managed a twitch in the corner of his mouth. He hoped Light didn't notice.

"The tree of knowledge, Light-kun. Eating the apple led to men's fall from paradise. It is a common assumption that the apple of the tree gave men knowledge. Not the kind Light-kun and so many others assume, unfortunately. Adam and Eve were very sharp and clever before their, ah, apple feast."

The goddamn air conditioning that ran on magic, children's tears and bells riled up again, and L glared straight ahead, trying to ignore the annoying chime of a bell that stalked him everywhere he went.

At first, he thought Light heard the damn bell too when something in the brunette's expression changed, but upon further examination L realized Light heard nothing, only became uncomfortable because of L's sudden pause.

_W - _

_Please bring in someone to fix the air conditioning; we appear to have chirping birds stranded inside our air vents – I suggest calling euthanasia experts. _

_-R_

Unlike L's request to purge the Yagami residence of unfunny Al Pacino movies with fire, this text earned him an immediate reply:

_R, this building does not have any air conditioning units. W_

Great.

"So _apples_," L nearly shouted after a good five-minute pause in the conversation, "where were we, Light-kun?"

"Apples and knowledge?"

"Yes. The tree the apple came from wasn't a tree of knowledge. It was a tree of knowledge _of good and evil._"

Light looked stoic.

"Oh," he said.

"Yes," L said. "Thus, Kira would not benefit from such an apple. If Kira was as perfect as he believes he is, surely he would be in paradise, except he would not be able to distinguish between good and evil because he would not know either, and therefore he would be unable to judge anyone."

Light said nothing, and L carried on.

"But Kira is the man in this story because he – ah," L made an appropriate, smug pause to punctuate his sentence, "pardon me, Light-kun, Kira is a _woman_ here," he savoured his own cruelty as the look of distress flashed across his suspect's face – woman, yes. Stripped of dignity and on the bottom, that's what Light was meant to hear, "…because Kira is Eve in my story – _she_ ate the apple and thus knows the difference between good and evil – or at least _she_ thinks _she_ does, and thus _she_ can judge criminals, because _she_ fell from paradise the moment _she_ learned about good and evil."

"I am so very offended that you called Kira a woman, because I'm Kira." Light yawned.

"Really?"

"No."

L thought that if he were to give up on the investigation process and just doctor the evidence against Light like he did with his school records, based on a joke, he probably could.

"Anyway," Light said and tipped the stack of rejected religious paraphernalia into the waste bin, and topped them off with the stack of the Holy books he had previously deemed useful, "so much for that idea. Never mind, then."

"Light-kun is bored," L observed.

"Yes, well – the day before you chose to _fuck_ me and then blackmail me to keep my mouth shut was the most exciting day in my life. A theological discussion you had with your _phone_ and _solitaire_ can't top it, sorry."

_-0-_

"Light-kun's sulking is unproductive."

"You think?"

"I think Light-kun is too hung up on events long done and over."

Light frowned an unflattering frown, and L wondered whether he saw Light display such an emotion so rarely because Light was secretly a psychopath and therefore had no emotions, was secretly a vampire movie actress and therefore had no emotions, or Light in fact did have emotions but did not display them because frowning led to wrinkles.

"You know, sometimes I wonder if you're that out of touch with time, or if you just pretend you are."

"What does Light-kun mean?"

"When do you think you _blackmailed_ me?"

"Hm," Light discussed blackmail as if it was the most natural thing in the world. "Several days ago."

"This _morning_, Ryuzaki."

"Long enough ago to get over it," L decided.

"It's the afternoon. You're losing it."

"I lost nothing. Please get back to work."

But it bothered L anyway, and he waited for Light to shuffle out of L's general presence before he pulled up the surveillance of their shared room. There were many files, and L wished he set the recordings to be hourly instead of daily, because there it was, in all its modest glory, Light's sweat-drenched and naked body, tense and frail; bare legs, spread all too wide and bent all too tightly; knees not hooked around L's waist, but oddly still and obedient against the mattress, and L, behind the pathetic and naked body, ramming, almost ruthlessly ramming into-

"Ryu-"

L chocked on the lungful of stale air he had forgotten to exhale and shut his laptop very _discreetly_.

"-zaki-san?" The chief of NPA loomed behind L in a very experienced, police-homicide-detective-like manner, and the words "experienced homicide" currently concerned L more than the "detective" part.

"Can I help you, Yagami-san?"

"Yes, though I can't say the same about your laptop-"

L continued his stealthy façade of _discreetness_ by sweeping up the bits of his laptop's LCD screen with his sleeve.

"In what way can I help you?"

But Yagami senior watched L with disapproval, not unlike the way his son watched L sometimes. No. L didn't want to go there.

"You know, Ryuzaki-san, if you have no use for your money other than converting it into Apple products and smashing them, you could donate to a charity."

"The computer had a virus in it and therefore had to be euthanized," L pried on the man's techno-ignorance, but Yagami wasn't buying it, and L had to explain to the chief that he was simply testing for the moral and material parenting Light would have been subjected to in his youth and that chief Yagami passed L's parenting test splendidly.

"I noticed a few abnormalities with these Yotsuba reports and I marked them up for your consideration," the older Yagami finally said, "but I admit I could have just left them at your desk. I'm actually worried about Light."

Why, that little blackmailing murderer who was blackmailing L for blackmailing him for… L lost his train of thought.

"Hmm? Is Light's behaviour in any way out of the norm?"

"Well," the older man was somewhat surprised. "Actually, yes, I was hoping you picked up on it as well. He seems a bit off today, doesn't he?"

"He seems to be," L agreed grudgingly.

"Ah," Yagami said, discouraged. "I was hoping you could tell me what it was. You two get along great."

"I understand Yagami-san may be mislead by Light's and mine friendship – please do not forget that despite all, your son is still a prime suspect in a mass murder investigation, and I am the leading detective on his case, and therefore however well we get along, he is always aware of this fact-"

"Yes, yes." L did not like to be interrupted, but allowed it for fathers who, upon discovering L had spent the night deflowering their son, would have enough police homicide experience to know how to get away with one. "I mean something else, Ryuzaki-san. I thought that if something was bothering him, you'd be the first he'd tell. Light is very fond of you, you know."

"He told me nothing."

"Well, if—no, _when_ he does, please let me know. It's rare to see him admiring anyone, or trusting anyone. Despite your, uh, unconventional tactics, you handled the investigation quite professionally, and I thank you for it. Ah, yes. Here are the files."

_-0-_

_R, you have been awake for over 48 hours. Are you having hallucinations? W_

L finally got to watch the tape of the day, finally alone, and grateful to be so.

To be fair, he didn't watch. He fast-forwarded.

_W, _

_no, I am not hallucinating. _

_-R_

And he didn't fast-forward because he felt guilty and didn't want to face a particularity nasty video of what may or may not have been a forced intercourse. With a minor. Who was a murder suspect. In L's custody. Who deserved cruelty. Who may have not been aware of himself being a murderer therefore unaware of himself deserving cruelty.

L glared beams of fiery destruction at anything that obstructed his vision.

_W, _

_but I may be lying._

_-R_

The blackmail of Light Yagami was as Light had said: it happened that morning, and though L distinctly remembered everyone going to bed right after, he had hallucinated it, and it wasn't uncommon. Sometimes his brain was so exhausted from riding hundreds of thought trains at once that L thought himself to be omnipresent; he would see everything and hear everything, and when sensory information was missing, his brain would fill in the gaps with logic. Logic that sometimes simply didn't happen.

_R, that is unfortunate and I will remind you to me cautious of decisions you make in your current state. I suggest trying to get some sleep. W_

Yes, L should really take a nap. Maybe Kira will repent for making L so tired and arrest himself.

_W, _

_I'll sleep when I'm dead._

_-R_

"Careful with what you text, phone karma is a very real thing."

L didn't bother turning around to face the honey voice taunting him from behind.

"Light-kun's wandering around my property is highly suspicious, as is his spying on my personal messages. Nine percent."

"Down?" Light chirped hopefully.

"No."

"Fine. It feels like that's all we do here is wander around your property and shuffle documents anyway. Mogi may be Kira by this logic. Or Matsuda. "

"Ah. Light-kun is bored."

"Well… no. Yes and no. It's just kind of awkward."

_Anything but this conversation. _

"Oh, no. Not _that_. The handcuffs. Thanks."

It only then occurred to L that a man he believed to have murdered enough people to be labelled a god was the boy he slept with and forgot to handcuff.

"Why would Light-kun thank me?" L could at least pretend that leaving a murderer to roam around his personal quarters had a purpose and was totally intended.

"Because you trust me?"

"No," L shot him down again, unamused.

"Well, fine. It was worth a try though, ha ha."

What was the Light Yagami trying to prove with his semi-awkward smiles, embarrassed appreciation, and charming attitude?

Did he want this school records changed back to normal? A criminal pardon? L's hand in marriage? New shoes? What?

"I just figured you trust me," he shook his head in protest before L could interrupt him, "a_ bit more_ now. A bit more. And you think I'm Kira a bit less. Otherwise-"

"Otherwise what, Kira-kun?"

"Otherwise you would've never, you know."

"Removed the handcuffs?"

"Slept with me."

L would have said anything if he had anything to say.

"So I just wanted to tell you something. In exchange."

Not the way L planned to receive his treasured three magic word confession, he admitted. He was thinking something more along the lines of standing over Light with solid proof against him in hand (probably obtained though some clever forgery trick), with second Kira giving up Light accidentally, with all NPA officers who never once doubted Light there to see L's victory, and with Light on his knees proclaiming himself a god even in defeat. And then Matsuda could shoot him, too. That would be nice.

"Of course. Please sign these documents and I will accompany Light-kun's trip to prison-"

"Come on, Ryuzaki. I'm serious."

L did not need serious things. He already had enough cake on his plate.

And he didn't need anymore- well, that wasn't entirely true. There was never enough cake.

His metaphor was very bad.

"I just wanted to tell you that I'm not Kira."

And that did it.

L was once again not amused in the slightest bit.

"At least not consciously. Or maybe I was Kira, but I am not anymore. I swear, I don't remember a thing. And if I was—or I am, than find evidence and you got me. I would not be surprised. You don't believe me?"

"No."

"Well, pretend you believe me. Just hypothetically, okay? Because I should have told you something a while ago."

"And Light-kun could not tell me before because-"

"Because before you wouldn't have even given me a chance to explain."

But now Light thought L would. Because he thought L believed in his innocence a little bit.

All because L forgot to reinstate the handcuffs and had sex with Kira just to shut him up.

_Just as L had intended. _Absolutely; that's exactly what happened. Totally just as planned. For real.

"Go on," L urged him, darting his eyes from corner to corner to make sure the recording hardware was functioning. It was. As a precaution, L subtly reached into his pocket for the heavy artillery.

"Well, sometimes I get… thoughts. They aren't murdering thoughts or subconscious thoughts, and this isn't confession, put the tape recorder down, Ryuzaki."

Sour, L took his hand out of his pocket and showed it to be empty to Light's satisfaction.

"So these thoughts… they are like a voice, in the back of my head, telling me to nudge the investigation a certain way, and whenever something very important happens with the investigation… like when I realized Yotsuba's profits went really high after a series of accidents… I know that this is right, this is supposed to happen, that it's good, that we're about to find Kira. I just know-"

L nodded, and while threading carefully about the subject, he asked, "does the voice tell you this?"

"No, I told you - it's not a voice to begin with. I don't hear it - I just know there is someone there guiding me to the answer about the whole Kira thing. It's like… my own thoughts stray and suddenly I'm thinking thoughts that aren't exactly my own. And it scares me, Ryuzaki. And you know the irony? The only one I can tell is you, and I was too afraid to tell you before. And it's just… sad."

"Light-kun understands this conversation is being recorded and Light-kun will undergo various psychiatric evaluations and interviews-"

Light's face was embarrassed and charming.

"-later," L resigned.

"You know, I wouldn't be telling you this if it would incriminate me any further, if that's even possible, ha. But you know, it's _not_ my split-personality Kira telling me things – I'm not Kira. I know this. If, Ryuzaki, if at some point I was Kira, I would have hated it. I could not have been Kira voluntarily. Things that he did… they're repulsive to me. Kira's murders are disgusting."

L forced himself to believe none of it.

"…and if I committed these murders, I am disgusted with myself. That's why whoever – or whatever Kira is, he has to be caught – I want him caught. That's why my stray thoughts want me to find and bring that Kira to justice. Because I hate thinking that at some point I could have been him."

L nodded his agreement, his head bobbing up like a ridiculous and slightly ugly bubble head doll.

"What do you think these thoughts are, Light-kun?"

"I think… it's God. Whatever Kira is, and however he's doing it… I think God, the real God, wants to stop him. And God is in everybody's head, a little bit anyway."

"Light-kun believes in God?" L felt mild amusement in light of their earlier conversation.

"If it's God telling me how to find that _bastard_, then yeah, I believe in God."

_Hn._

L found it inappropriate to point out that the God Light believed in talked in Light's own voice.

_-0-_

_**A/N:**__ Ohai. I underwent another personality crisis and ended up right back here. I should be okay to write now. _

_I got a recommendation to anyone who reads things on goes on 16 hour drive to Oregon to spend 1 day there and drives 16 hours back (not that it wasn't fun): you guys..Ender's Game. Read or listen on an audiobook. Go go go. It's awesome. It strokes every Wammy House theme ever and has spaceships in it. _

_Thank you for reviewing and being patient with Miss King: _**FortunateM, misswarchan, DaJapican, Emriel, samalane, flyingpardin, Viyola, Sinik, Art-Of-Escape, Seelenspiel, SasuHika, blueandorangesky10, BI-CHAN11, May Wong Oneleeter, Ceelia-18 Humo, Sychronergy, TheEndofTag, Elelith, **and **Chellyisback. I LOVE YOU AND I'M NOT DEAD YET!**

**Ch 4: ****The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (1)**

Pls review.

**Do you believe Light?**

l

l

l

V


	4. Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, Part

A/N: Hello, my name is King, PILLS! YAY! I WROTE SO MUCH STUFF OMG UPDATES ALL WEEK ...and I don't own Death Note.

**Rue Transnonain**

**CH4: Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, Part 1 **

L would have never given Light enough credit to repress confronting him about sexual intercourse of questionable consent for this long. Days passed – long days, filled with bells and doubt and long conversations about bells and doubt, and still, Light would not confront L.

It was later in the afternoon that L had realized he fucked Light yesterday and blackmailed him only last night; no long days passed, just long and disjointed hours.

Was Light right? Was L losing it?

If he was, then there were other things Light may have also been right about, certainly.

"Light-kun, bring me cake," L demanded.

Light, the sly animal of opportunity that he was, looked around the conference room. The important business of Lunch had whisked the officers of law away from their trivial little task of sorting out violent murders from Kira's executions. How charming it was of them to give priority to ham sandwiches.

"Get it yourself," Light said once he confirmed the room empty.

"But," L insisted, "the cake is closer to Light-kun's side of the table. Please slide it over."

Light slid the cake into the waste bin.

L was outraged.

When Chief Yagami and Matsuda pried the two of them apart twenty minutes, a split lip, a bruised cheekbone and (what L was hoping were) a dozen broken ribs (that later turned out to be only minor bruises) later, L shrugged off dust and retreated the opposite direction of Light's retreat, and effectively locked himself in a broom closet.

The broom closet, L philosophized during the hour he spent getting acquainted with it, had many perks and downsides. The mop, who provided much better company than Light, thank you very much, was an excellent conversation partner because it didn't interrupt L to tell him about his minor miscalculations.

Another perk was the closet's door's external appearance. It looked like an ordinary door, apparently, and no one dared to follow L and his foul mood, hence the NPA had yet to find L in a broom closet mentally conversing with a mop.

The downside was, of course, that L was locked in a broom closet and too proud to ask anyone to let him out. His plan was to pick the lock once everyone cleared out of the room.

Another downside was Light.

"Are you going to spend the rest of the day sulking in there?"

How _dare_ Light.

L said nothing. No one would know he was in there if L didn't respond. If Light tried to break in, L would just hold the door. That'll show him.

"I sent them away for a coffee break, if that's what you're concerned about."

"Hmm," L hummed in reproach.

"What?"

"The snack breaks are now unpaid. What do they think we do here, sample foodstuffs?"

"Well," said Light through the still closed door, "the phase we've been going-"

"Don't, Light-kun. Don't."

"I'm just saying. Everyone's a bit frustrated. Not just… you."

"What is this supposed to mean?"

"Well… you know. Frustrated… like _that. You know_," Light lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, "_sexually_."

"Hmm."

"What, more unpaid overtime?"

"No. I am coming out of the closet. Let me out."

Light laughed. His laughter was brisk and sweet. It had a pleasant ring to it.

When the door opened and the artificial light of the meeting room temporary blinded L, his hand found another hand, Light's hand, soft and smooth and tipped with sharp fingernails. Before L had a chance to slide his fingers up and grab Light's wrist to pull himself up in a manly fusion, Light's smooth fingers wrapped around his, and L was up, and the light wasn't as blinding anymore, and the hand-holding thing Light was doing was awkward.

L tried to pass it off and thanked Light for helping him up.

Light nodded curtly.

"Now is the correct time to release my hand, Light-kun."

Light made a noise and shook his head.

"We need to talk."

"Light-kun wants to talk to the hand?"

"That describes our conversations pretty accurately, actually."

This time, the NPA choose the perfect timing to catch the two of them: Light, with an embarrassed smile on his face, holding L's hand, and L, with his clothes looking like he had spent some quality time in a very tight closet. Whether anyone had enough time to take in the scene and decipher its meaning remained a mystery, because L's foot was itching to greet Light's face anyway.

This, of course, was perfect excuse. L yanked his hand out, dropped and kicked, and Light retaliated.

They were fighting again, clearly.

Move on, NPA.

Nothing to see here.

_-0-_

"You do realize insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, right?"

L tried not to sigh. There always existed a threshold, he supposed, one where after failing to produce evidence after a set period of time, the suspect would stop taking charges laid against him seriously.

Needless to say, L had never reached this threshold or ever came near discovering it. Coil never reached such a threshold. Deneuve never reached such a threshold.

L had.

And, he had to admit, he was embarrassed in front world's second and fourth best detectives for having come to a point when the most vicious murderer of the century had stopped taking him seriously.

Never mind that Coil and Deneuve were L. Never mind that at all.

"Light-kun's aversion is suspicious. Ten percent."

"You only say that when you have nothing to scare me with."

"Eleven percent."

"For what?"

"Ending your sentences with prepositions."

"Of course," Light blew at his bangs, "that clearly proves I'm Kira. You got me."

L said nothing, instead he observed.

Light Yagami looked pathetic. L explained away the pathetic look by Light's hair that had grown out a full inch during his incarceration, and now hung in longish, sad-looking clumps. The inch that had grown out was black, of course. L observed that real hair grow out, from behind a surveillance monitor, on the other side of prison bars, far, and as keen as ever.

Once, L had imagined what real Light Yagami would look like, without the gently-bleached auburn hair and contact lenses. Without the black gym suit L deemed as appropriate prison uniform. L had regretted allowing the gym suit. Somehow, with his hands tied behind his back and having gone without a shower for days and without a hairbrush for weeks, without shoes or toothpaste or nail clippers, sixty feet underground and inside a soundproof steel cage, Light had managed to make that gym suit look like a piece of designer wear. Sometimes, L wondered what Light would look like without the suit.

That's when Light got to him, L realized.

From inside a twelve-ton panic room that doubled as a nuclear bunker that L had hastily converted into a prison, Light got him, got _to_ him, and L now that there was no steel cage between them L was vulnerable to Light's pathetic hair and sad expressions and awkwardness and shyness and without a single tell of bluff.

"-about twenty questions?"

"I beg Light-kun pardon?"

"I said, how about twenty questions. Let's play twenty questions, alright?"

L curtly nodded and watched Light smile from across a metal interrogation table.

"You start," Light said.

"Does it start with a 'K' end with an 'A' and is Light-kun?"

"No, no and no. Three down."

"Light-kun's turn."

Light opened his mouth to speak, but closed it. He looked around the table, and of course I could trust Light to find an imperfection with his shiny table. It had a fallen hair on it. Light, of course, picked it up and studied it.

He then tried again.

"Is there… something I should know?

"Definitely not. The less Light-kun knows, the better. God forbid you become any smarter than you already are. One down."

"No," the teenage murderer rolled his eyes at L, "I meant – is there something I should be concerned about, from, you know-"

Ah.

So Light wanted this on the record.

"No, Light-kun. There are no diseases you should be worried about."

"Are you sure?"

"Quite sure."

"Because, you know, you never asked about me, so I assumed you thought you have nothing to worry about, and if you have nothing to worry about, you must have something, and if you have something we should have used a condom, and I really didn't think at the time to ask you to use one. Would it have made a difference? I don't know, I-"

L wasn't buying the distress and awkwardness and the outburst in a sentence that was far too long for its own good. He refused.

This was Kira, L had to remind himself. Kira.

"Prior to his incarceration, Light-kun's blood was ran for everything imaginable in case being Kira was a diagnosable disease."

"You know my bloodwork?"

"Yes, of course."

"Oh. That's why you weren't worried?"

"Yes, and I assure Light-kun has nothing to be worried about. He can of course request-"

"No-no. It's fine. I trust you. It's just that I was sort of thinking about diseases earlier today and realized I… sorry, Ryuzaki. I freaked out, you know?" Light reached behind his back and added another embarrassed smile for L to distrust.

"This is fine. These were fair questions. Seven down."

"Wait- you counted those?"

"Eight down."

Light smacked his lips.

"You're ruthless. Go."

"Does Light-kun ever think what his father would say once Light-kun is proven to be Kira?"

"Ouch!"

"Answer."

"Yeah. I do. Four."

"Five, what does he think?"

"Five," Light agreed. "I think – if I was Kira and you showed my father definitive proof that I was Kira – I don't think I'd care what my father would think."

"Six, elaborate: is this a fit of rebellion?"

"No, not in a fit of rebellion. I'm not much for rebellion, I was raised better than that. I think if - right now, this second -if I remembered being Kira, and my father was here, and you had proof that I was Kira, I don't think it would matter to me what my father thinks of me. If felt I had the right to kill criminals, I would definitely feel the right to… not care."

"This is a lie. Finish."

"If I were Kira, I would feel the right to kill my father and murder you where you stand, just for getting in my way."

"So Light-kun would care?"

"I would care because my father and you both know better than anything the flaws of the justice system, and you not only do you choose to do nothing about it, you are trying to stop the only person who can."

"Hypothetically, of course," L reminded Light with the most disturbing smile he could muster.

"Yeah."

"Nine. It was alright, right? The… sex?"

"Quite alright for me," L nodded, as unfazed as the day a waitress asked him to put his feet down and he complied and in turn had asked her to deliver his order to his quarter-million dollar Bentley stretch limo. "How was it for Light-kun?"

"I will take that as eight," and then he nodded.

"Good."

"You weren't trying to make it good though, were you?"

"No."

Another nod. This time, some of the sad hair spilled from behind an ear and brushed across a tan cheek.

L allowed a pause of an appropriate length. He knew the appropriate length of a pause from watching various police interviews where a similar confrontation took place. It was four seconds.

He was even about to fire off another question.

"I don't want to play this game anymore," Light said before completely shutting down on L, leaving L with an eerie sense of not quite knowing what exactly Light had meant by 'game'.

_-0-_

Light was Kira.

L was L.

It should have been black and white, except possibilities added shades and even rainbow hues to the whole hypothetical scenario, and L had to remind himself to not feel terrible.

He even consulted the law books of every country he wasn't sure about to conclude that if a prisoner on a death row or life imprisonment suffered spontaneous amnesia and had no recollection of his crimes, every country in every corner of the world would still keep such a prisoner incarcerated and facing death regardless of the prisoner's awareness of his own crimes.

This, of course, was just a long and fancy way of justifying L and his less conventional methods, albeit with consent, albeit with questionable consent.

And L didn't like himself feeling bad for his prisoner.

The more he had thought about it, the more he realized that sleeping with Light was a mistake. Light had nothing to gain from it, and L knew L had nothing to lose from it, except perhaps the entirety of his detective integrity and his ability to act on impulse.

This, L realized in a manner that was not necessarily sad or depressing, rather acknowledging, that the Kira case would be L's last case.

Regardless of its outcome.

L will never trust his own judgement again.

Meanwhile, he thought, there would be no harm in comforting Light, which was what L's heart ached to do.

He felt bad.

It was a mistake.

And while L was childish and hated to lose, at the very same time felt bad every time, and when he chose to steal a (blonde) child's chocolate bar, he would, eventually but always, come to his senses, apologize, and buy Mello another one.

Such was life.

And L knew that beneath rivalry and absolute abhorrence of what Light had done, he could, on many levels, relate to him.

It was rare for L to encounter cases involving sociopaths.

L always made the right decisions and stayed away from them.

This time, he made a mistake.

And he was going to pay for it.

For now though, as he searched for Light to apologize to him, there was no harm in letting his guard down.

He would talk to Light.

Apologize.

Talk things out, like two human beings, neither quite right in the head, but it was okay.

Light was okay.

Light was sulking in their shared room.

It was okay for L to do this.

All he had to do was open the door.

Light was just beyond it.

Except that he wasn't.

Not in the investigation area, not in the videotape room, not in the bathroom, or the copy room, or the closet, or the filing cabinet. Not in the cupboard, not at his desk, not under the rug.

And when it occurred to L that Light Yagami was really gone from the building was when L finally remembered that Light Yagami was not the boy L bedded cruelly; Light Yagami, the sociopath murderer with a body count running in low four digits, was no-longer in L's custody.

_-0-_

"Light Yagami-kun obviously ran away because he is Kira, I am certain of it," declared L, completely uncertain why Light had ran away.

Did Light run away because he was a murderer and so he went to hide in the woods and plot L's demise?

Or, did Light run away because he was a teenager and so he went to hide in the corner of his room and cry while writing bad poetry and bathing in self-pity?

Or was it both?

Somehow, an iconic image of an emotionally unstable teenager who was also a genius who was also a murderer who had a revering grudge against L and some magical means to drop L dead was not a comforting image.

The NPA were busy looking for Light, the NPA's chief was busy sulking and possibly contemplating a career suicide, and Watari was busy not making L's life any easier by sending him battalions of reproachful looks.

All the L's horses and all the L's men, and none were there to listen to him as he said things that convicted Light and justified himself. Mentally, L rang the town bell and summoned everyone to watch Light Yagami, convicted of murder, strapped to a wooden pole atop of paper and firewood. Matsuda and Mogi were there, resentful of the execution, but defeated. In L's imagination, Soichiro Yagami stood with his head bowed slightly, because true to the real man, this Soichiro Yagami knew what his son was capable of, if only subconsciously in some black part of his mind he refused to acknowledge existed.

But L wasn't there to set the imaginary Light Yagami on fire and end the witch hunt. He had someone else do it for him – someone nameless and faceless, someone L would not identify with.

L was watching the pyre from a distance away, safely tucked into an imaginary plush throne inside an imaginary panic room with steel walls and electric fences ready to kill off whoever would approach his safehouse.

Because even on his last agonizing breaths of ash and his own smoldering skin, Light Yagami made L _fear_.

Fear Light, if the murderer somehow managed to spoil L's victory and save his best kill for last.

Fear himself, if it turned out L could not stand to watch Light burn.

A chime, not like the screams of someone whose vocal cords were boiling inside his flesh, but quiet, whimsical whispers were what reached L a mile's distance from the fire.

They were bells that melted into words.

'_Why aren't you watching?'_ Light said from where the red tongues of the flames where devouring his perfect hair. _'Why are you afraid?'_

"I'm not afraid of you," L told the bells. "You're dying – you can't kill me. And if I'm not there to see it, I won't stop your execution."

Light laughed in a pleasant honey pitch.

'_Aren't you afraid that you are wrong?'_

The throne L sat in was red.

"-yuzaki. Ryuzaki. _L_."

L opened his eyes and the dryness of air stung him like Light's fire and the brightness of the room blinded him.

"Yes, Watari?" said L, unfazed, reached for an empty tea cup and sipped the air from it noisily, absolutely inconspicuous in his pretending not to have been asleep at all.

In his hands, wrinkled with age and the burden of having to deal with L for as long as he had, Watari had no tea, biscuits, cellphone, or documents.

Which meant that Watari was there to make L feel even worse.

So L compiled a laundry list of unpleasant confrontational topics and answered them in order of priority.

"I am sorry for what I did. Yes, I am aware that he is a minor. No. I am not sure. No. Yes. No. Not a good idea. Seemed like a good idea at the time. It would be, ah, best if Soichiro Yagami knows nothing. Yes, I am sure that has nothing to do with him running away. No, I am not lying to myself. Yes, I am aware of the consequences of my actions. Probably off to kill us all. I am aware. I am sorry. No, I haven't yet. I'll tell him when we catch him. Confinement. Persecution. Gummy bears. He will have no case. I will deny it ever happened. I apologize."

Instead of acknowledging how sorry L felt (not all), Watari shook his head and took a seat across from where L fainted to sleep in his chair.

"L," he began, and L checked around to confirm their privacy before going through his mental laundry list to see what he could have possibly missed that Watari would still want to talk about. "L, honesty answer, how are your morals?"

"Very low," said L, remembering this particular conversation taking place when they began investigating Kira.

"And, if you were to ask Kira about his morals, how would he describe them?"

"High," is how much moral footing Kira saw in his actions. "Non-existent" was how his morals truly were, but beauty was in the eye of the beholder.

"Then," said Watari, "next time you decide to seduce your underage suspect and blackmail him into staying quiet about it, remember that you are dealing with a self-righteous vigilante. All that separates the two of you are your willingness to uphold the law and his willingness to take it into his own hands."

L sipped air from his cup and glared holes in the old man's wrinkled forehead.

"I can handle myself."

"L, you can't call last night 'handling yourself.' Either treat him as a suspect, or have an intimate relationship with him. Either find evidence against him, or forfeit the case."

Either, or. Never both.

L didn't want Light Yagami, didn't even think of him that way before or after he had the misfortune of showing him what a sex in L's bed was like. But if he were to entertain the notion that he might want him – for whatever purposes – then L had a problem to consider.

Whenever L saw what he wanted, he took it. Just like that. It was just that, he never wanted something so delicately interweaved with an ongoing investigation, not like this, and never before.

He never wanted something that could kill him.

He never had a suspect he _feared_.

'_Are you afraid for your life?' _L heard the reminiscence of his dream chime to him like a silver bell announcing lunch.

"No," L said definitively, recalled his dream and realized nobody in his dream ever said anything about his life.

Then L realized he was hearing voices.

'_But aren't you afraid that you are wrong?'_

"I am not wrong about you," L told the voice in his head, forgetting about Watari so completely that his elderly assistant just vanished from the seat he was in and out of L's vision indefinitely, until L would chose to remember about him.

Such was his logic – if L didn't see it, it didn't exist.

So he heard no knowing remarks from Watari trying to win his attention back, heard no scolding note in his voice, no reason and no warnings.

In the face of reason and warnings, all L heard was himself.

And he was afraid to admit that he was actually afraid.

Not of death, certainly, because long ago, L had accepted that his _job_ will be the last thing he will ever do.

Not of himself, either. Having a shallow and casual sexual relationship with his suspect did not negate Light's guilt, and so when the time came, L will not hesitate to condemn the man – the _boy_ – to death penalty he earned himself.

But L was afraid. It was a feeling that he found only recently, and like cancer, it had spread too far and became too contagious for L to negotiate with it. L was afraid of being wrong about Light, about everything, so afraid of it that it was all he felt for the hour since Yagami's disappearance, afraid of being so wrong that it would bring about a catastrophe.

Being wrong was only a small percentage – a fraction of a fraction, but in his moment of weakness, L felt the full weight of that fraction, and doubt was a heavy burden.

That tiny speck of doubt was why L stormed out on Watari without saying anything; he grabbed his rain jacket and tracker bracelet, and left.

He also took Watari's gun on impulse, just for a moment contemplating about not wanting to play this _game_ anymore either, and for the first time during the Kira case, L considerer that he had it well in his means to 'disappear' Light Yagami since Light made it so easy for him by running away from him.

Chapter 5:** Who We Are, Part 1**

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_V_


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